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Abigail Locke is a critical social psychologistwhose research work specialises in issues around gender, parenting, identityand health

This paper examines parenting cultures withinthe family putting the focus on fathers who are acting in a primary caregivingposition for their children. Despite contemporary societal discourses of‘parenting’ that imply gender neutrality, and recent moves towards extendedparental leave, caregiving remains a highly gendered practice within the UKwith the mother typically taking on the primary caregiving role in mostfamilies. UK social policy related to families and caring often reinforcesthese traditional gendered binary caring roles, however, at an individuallevel, fathers express wanting to be more ‘involved’ with the care of theirchildren and ‘share’ more parenting responsibilities with their partners. Usinga critical discursive psychological analysis on a series of unstructuredinterviews with fathers who were acting in a primary caregiving capacity fortheir children, there was an overarching egalitarian discourse that emerged of‘parenting as partnership’. This was marked through a number of ways includinga ‘discourse of we’ when it came down to decision making for their children; adesire to be supportive of their partners’ careers when narrating their reasonsfor initially taking on the primary caregiving role; and a labelling ofthemselves and their caregiving practices in gender neutral terms of‘parenting’ instead of fathering. These egalitarian discourses and parentingpractices stand in direct contrast with the common societal genderedconstructions of caregiving and traditional hegemonic ‘fathering’ roles. Giventhe recent changes in parental leave within the UK, it will be interesting tosee if these egalitarian discourses become more commonplace within UK parentingcultures.